


sunday morning brunch

by cryingaggressively



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Family, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 23:51:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14366415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryingaggressively/pseuds/cryingaggressively
Summary: "It's just - I needed to get away for a while. I love my job and I love Neal, but it can be exhausting to be around kids all the time. It's not the same for David. He takes care of Neal while I'm at work, but I take him after, because there's just some things he can't do on the farm with a baby about." Once she'd started, the words seemed to be pouring out of her.Killian nodded understandingly, watching her face closely. It made her hesitate, this much attention focused on her, and she suddenly felt very warm, shame turning her cheeks pink. As if he knew, Killian turned to pull two cups out of the cabinet and poured coffee into them, no longer watching her."I love Neal so much, but sometimes... Sometimes I wish I didn't have to take care of him," she went on quietly, the hot tears in her eyes obscuring her vision. The clink of a cup being set on a surface echoed in the room and soon, a paper towel appeared in front of her.Or: Snow has a crisis and Killian is good at the hope speech, too.





	sunday morning brunch

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I don't know what this is, I just know I gave myself feels while writing it. Hope you enjoy it!

 

It was a good thing she'd given the key back, Snow thought. She'd walked in pre-morning delight before and it wasn't something she cared to repeat. So she simply rang the doorbell and waited for either Emma or Killian to make an appearance.

At half past eight on a Sunday it wasn't a huge surprise there wasn't an immediate answer, but after a good while spent waiting, she rang again. That, too, went unanswered. Nervously, she shifted her weight back and forth between her legs. Should she come back later? Maybe it was a little early for an unannounced visit after all.

Snow crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. Looking at her watch, she noticed she must have been waiting for several minutes already. If nobody'd opened in a minute, she would just leave, she decided.

But there! Finally, she could detect movement beyond the door and very soon, it opened. Unsurprisingly, it was her son-in-law (and how weird _that_ was) who opened the door. Emma definitely wasn't a morning person and on a Sunday wouldn't voluntarily get up before noon. Admittedly, Hook didn't look particularly amused either.

"Good morning, Killian," she told him despite that, smiling sheepishly up at him.

He cocked an eyebrow and leaned against the doorway, hand on the frame. "Good morning. To what do I owe this very unexpected pleasure?"

Belatedly, she registered he was wearing a black bathrobe and not much else. His hair was damp and for once, his eyes were eyeliner-free. She'd (thankfully) never seen him without pants on and she was weirdly fixated on the fact that she could see his bare feet and legs. His left sleeve was empty, hook absent. Hurriedly, she raised her eyes back to his face.

"Sorry, were you still showering when I rang the doorbell?" she asked guiltily.

He shrugged. "I was almost finished. Do you want to come in? I'm guessing you want to speak to Emma?"

He stepped back, opening the door wider. She followed his invitation and crossed the threshold.

The morning sun was shining through the kitchen windows and bathed the whole living area in warm, golden light. It really was a beautiful house; especially since Emma and Killian had had more time to live it in. The clean-cut furniture was now balanced with the fair bit of clutter teenage boys brought into a home, photos pinned to the walls and a colorful throw on the sofa. Emma's favorite red jacket was hanging over a chair and her boots were strewn messily next to Killian's carefully placed ones.

She looked back at him. "I do,  but it's nice to talk to you too, you know?" Snow told him honestly.

She hadn't always felt that way, but by now she knew exactly what Emma saw in Hook, what David had been ready to accept far earlier than herself.

Her daughter had once rightfully pointed out that she had been all too ready to forgive Regina for everything she'd done, all the while mistrusting Killian, whose crimes against their family paled in comparison to Regina's.

She still wasn't sure why exactly that had been. Maybe because she had gotten to know Regina as a girl and still viewed her with childish innocence? Maybe because she'd clung on to the idea of Emma and Neal as a couple? It was something she should probably figure out sometime, but it hardly mattered right now.

Snow had long since recognized that his flirtatious comments and innuendos were as much of a shield as Emma's walls were and Emma was very happy with him, which was the most important part And why shouldn't she be? Killian had proven time and time again that he had a good heart and was fiercely loyal to her daughter and their family.

And he _could_ be so sweet, she thought to herself as his ears reddened almost imperceptibly.

"I - yes, of course. Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee? Have you had breakfast yet?" he asked her, diverting the focus from the thread of conversation he was visibly uncomfortable with. He guided her towards a kitchen chair.

Smiling gently at him, she sat down and started to peel off her jacket. "No, I haven't, actually. I'd love a cup of coffee, if it's no trouble."

He nodded and busied himself with the coffee maker. "What do you want to talk to Emma about, if you don't mind me asking? Or is this just a social visit?"

"Oh no, it's about Benji," she clarified as she hung her jacket over the back of her chair.

Killian turned around to her, eyebrows raised. Benji was one of the Lost Boys, the one who had cracked when Emma had offered them a home in Storybrooke. He had been one of the first ones to find a new home, with a nice, middle-aged couple who adored him and up to now, he had been very happy with them and remarkably well-behaved, compared to the other Lost Boys.

"Is he making trouble...?" Killian asked her, disbelief in his voice.

"No, he's just been very absentminded and listless in school and that for a while now. I talked with his parents, and they said he's been like that at home, too. But he won't talk to them or to me and we're kind of worried about him. I thought maybe Emma would get through to him, you know? She was the first one he trusted here."

Killian nodded, fingers drumming staccato on the kitchen counter. "Not a bad idea," he conceded, then squinted at her. "But couldn't you just have sent her a text?" he wondered, no trace of irritation in his voice.

Snow swallowed. Could she have sent a text? Yes.

"Yeah, but you know, I thought it'd be nice to see you guys." Which wasn't a lie, but not the whole truth either.

With the way he was scrutinizing her, she was suddenly hyperaware that her face looked eerily like Emma's.

"Are you alright?" Way too much, apparently.

Snow blew out a breath. She hadn't talked to David about this, who was so happy and so busy with their new farm. And she absolutely couldn't tell Emma. Who else was there? Ruby was gone, in Oz with Dorothy, and this really wasn't something to see Archie about.

"Well. I just..." she trailed off.

Killian waited patiently for her to go on. And really, wasn't he the ideal person to talk to about this? He wasn't directly involved and he hardly was a blabbermouth, wouldn't tell Emma without her consent.

 Screw it.

"It's just - I needed to get away for a while. I love my job and I love Neal, but it can be _exhausting_ to be around kids all the time. It's not the same for David. He takes care of Neal while I'm at work, but I take him after, because there's just some things he can't do on the farm with a baby about." Once she'd started, the words seemed to be pouring out of her.

Killian nodded understandingly, watching her face closely. It made her hesitate, this much attention focused on her, and she suddenly felt very warm, shame turning her cheeks pink. As if he knew, Killian turned to pull two cups out of the cabinet and poured coffee into them, no longer watching her.

"I love Neal so much, but sometimes... Sometimes I wish I didn't have to take care of him," she went on quietly, the hot tears in her eyes obscuring her vision. The clink of a cup being set on a surface echoed in the room and soon, a paper towel appeared in front of her.

"I'm sorry, this get-up doesn't allow for a handkerchief," Killian told her, gesturing towards the bathrobe. She chuckled wetly and patted under her eyes with the paper towel. A hand settled on her shoulder.

"Now, I'm not a parent. But everyone gets fed-up sometimes, Snow," he told her, squeezing her shoulder gently.

Later, looking back at this conversation, she would notice how telling it was that he used her first name.

"But he's my child! What does it say about me that I don't even want to see him, sometimes?!" She stared up at him, disturbed by her own feelings.

"It says that you're a person like anybody else, who needs some time to herself now and then," he answered her calmly.

She sniffed, looking up at him. "I wanted this so badly and now that I have it, I'm too stupid to appreciate it. And my kids are suffering for it. I don't even know when I last met with Emma just the two of us and the first time in ages I go to see her, it's because I don't want to spend time with her brother."

"You're not stupid. Neal is too young to notice if you take an afternoon off and Emma is fine, Snow. If anything, she's worried. You're looking a bit peaked these days," he tried to comfort her. 

"That's worse, though. I'm her mother, I'm supposed to look after her, not the other way round."

Killian sat down in the chair opposite hers. "Yes, but you're of an age with her. It's bound to be a bit different."

"And whose fault is that? Mine. I was the one who insisted we let her become the savior. If I'd let him, David would have jumped through the portal and raised her. Like she deserved."

Her thoughts wandered. "We were so close, before the first curse broke. We never got back to that point. She's much closer to David now."

"She still needs you," Killian insisted.

"And what for? David is the parent she confides in and he just _knows_ the right balance. He's like a friend to her, but he makes these cheesy jokes and acts so overprotective sometimes," she said, smiling a bit through her tears.

"Sometimes, I wonder what I'm supposed to help her with. The advice I can give her is from the perspective of someone the same age. I try to sound like I know what I'm doing, but I don't.   _You_ are more qualified to give her advice than I." She paused. "Forget about the advice thing, even, I was the one who started talking about a new baby in Neverland, when I knew she still felt like an orphan. Who does that? And what would she think about me, if she knew how I'm feeling about Neal?" She was sobbing by the end of her speech, burying her face in her hands.

She heard the chair scrape over the floor as Killian got up. Then he was hugging her, crouched awkwardly over her and she was sobbing into his terrycloth-clad chest.

"You should tell Emma about all this," he advised softly.

She wrenched her head up abruptly. "No, I -"

"Listen to me. You might not always know what advice to give her, but you have more in common with Emma than you think. Don't fixate on being her mother. Just be there for her." Then he added, even more gently, "And let her be there for you."

She set down her cheek against his shoulder again. Slowly, she calmed down, only hiccupping every now and then. "How you feel about being a teacher and a mother, being surrounded by children all hours of the day?"

 She nodded against him. "Yeah?"

"That's how Emma felt about being the savior for everyone."

"Oh," she breathed out, tears gathering in her eyes again. But she blinked them away. Enough.

 "And as much as I want her to confide in me, there's some things I'll never quite understand. Like what it was like to give up Henry," he hinted.

"You're right," Snow breathed, determination seeping back into her.

"I know."

"Urgh, Killian," she huffed, grinning, and swatted his arm slightly.

He laughed and straightened. Only then did she notice he'd been holding his left arm behind the chair the whole time.

She looked down at his sleeve. "It doesn't bother me, you know. You could have hugged me with both arms."

At that, he froze for a second, interrupting his way to get the cups of coffee that were sitting on the counter opposite her, where he had seemingly sat them down before coming to her rescue with the paper towel.

"If I ever said something that made you feel uncomfortable about your arm I'm sorry."

He said nothing for a while, just picked up his cup and leaned against the counter. Finally, he mumbled, "I don't recall anything that sat badly with me. If you ever said something, it was nothing I wasn't used to."

She flinched. "That doesn't make it right."

Killian just shrugged, raising his cup and taking a gulp.

"Show me?" she asked him, then immediately cringed.

His eyebrows climbed up his forehead, the cup hovering forgotten near his lips.

"You don't have to -" she hurried to tell him, trying to do damage control.

"Alright," he interrupted her and set the cup down. It clinked softly on the stone counter.

Surprised, Snow stopped in the middle of her sentence, mouth open.

A long moment, he did nothing, eyes on hers, then he clicked his tongue and pulled his left sleeve up.

As he took measures to never show it in public, she had expected a huge, bulging scar, but it looked rather unremarkable. She knew he had lost the hand to a sword, and it showed. The scar was extremely faded, a sign of the long amount of time that had passed since the injury had occurred. It sat on the very end of his blunted wrist. She surmised the skin had been pulled in to cover the open wound and yes, on that spot it was a little uneven, but all in all, it wasn't horrible. Just a bit disorienting to see the absence of a hand (or hook).

"Oh, it's not that bad," she blurted out before she could help it, promptly slapping a hand over her mouth.

Killian just laughed, visibly relieved. "I'm glad you think so," he told her, dropping the sleeve and studiously avoiding her eyes.

Snow cleared her throat. "Do you have creamer?" she asked, nodding towards the second cup sitting on the counter.

"Oh, sure." He hastily leaned over to the fridge. "I think Emma would drink it straight from the bottle if she didn't need the coffee to wake up."

He handed her the bottle, the same brand of hazelnut creamer she used at home, and her cup. Snow smiled. It was ridiculous, such a tiny detail, but it confirmed what Killian had told her. She and Emma had more in common than she thought.

Killian leaned back to inspect the fridge while she poured an unholy amount of creamer into her coffee. "Are you hungry? I'm afraid our food situation is rather dire. Eggs and toast?"

"Sounds good to me," she approved around a mouthful of coffee and that was the last thing said for a while. She watched him crack eggs into the pan and pop bread into the toaster in companionable silence.

 

When he started plating the food, Snow heard someone come down the stairs.

"Mom! What are you doing here so early?" Emma greeted her with a huge yawn as she leaned down and hugged her with one arm.

Snow reciprocated, laying her hand on Emma's arm and leaning into the hug.

"Oh, I wanted to talk to you about something." Killian threw her a look as he placed a plate in front of her. "And I needed to get out of the house."

Emma hummed knowingly, grabbing a cup and pouring herself her morning dose. "Yeah, I get that. When we were in New York, I was so glad when Henry stayed over at a friend's sometimes. Here it's different, with Regina and everything, but back then it was nice to have some time to myself."

Snow felt her lower lip do something suspiciously like a wobble, but got herself under control while Emma tried to swipe some of the scrambled eggs out of the pan. Killian swatted playfully swatted her hand with the spatula.

"Ah, ah, ah, Swan, wait your turn," he told her and divided the rest of the food onto two plates.

Emma pulled three forks out of a drawer and took the chair opposite her. Killian sat down the plates and took a seat next to his wife.

Unsurprisingly, Emma dug in furiously and Killian watched her for a moment, smirking at her. Snow herself had to swallow down a laugh, so she too stuffed some eggs in her mouth.

"This is good!" she said, surprised. Emma laughed, quickly putting her hand over her mouth to avoid spluttering egg all over the table.

"Tell me, am I to take that tone of surprise as an insult?" Killian drawled, gesturing with his fork in her direction.

"No no, I'm sorry -" she started, but stopped when she noticed Killian grinning at her.

"It's necessary that I know how to cook _some_ things, otherwise we would live entirely off of those Pop-Tarts," he explained, narrowly avoiding the fist aimed for his shoulder.

"I cook!" her daughter exclaimed.

Killian turned towards her, raising an eyebrow. "If you lived alone, would you or would you not live off of Pop-Tarts and Granny's?"

Emma opened her mouth, clearly ready to retort, but nothing came out.

Killian shrugged in a motion clearly saying 'told you so' and took a bite of his toast.

"Yeah, okay, maybe I would, but I don't live alone, do I? I do breakfast and stuff now."

Yes, Snow was all too well aware of the last occasion she had seen Emma cooking, although it hadn't been a spatula she had been handling then.

Clearly, the both of them had had the same trail of thought, because Emma changed the subject quickly.

"Anyway, what have you two been up to?" she asked them in between bites of food. She swallowed, then looked closer at Snow. "Have you been crying? Everything okay?" She looked back and forth between her and Killian.

"I'm fine. Killian is a pretty good listener," she explained quietly, throwing him a glance and a quick smile.

His ears and cheeks went scarlet and he busied himself with his breakfast. "Easy to do, if you're fond of the person."  

A quick burst of affection went through her at that and she would have gotten up and hugged him if she hadn't known it would make him uncomfortable.

Emma smiled brightly and despite the morning light in the kitchen, it felt to Snow like the sun had come out for the first time in days.

"Ah wuff you guysh," she told them through a mouth full of food.

 

 

After, when the plates had been cleared and she'd told Emma about Benji and Emma and Killian had laughingly told her about the last case of drunk and disorderly, who'd tried to serenade them into opening the cell, she felt better than she had in weeks.

When she'd hugged him goodbye, she looked at him, with his hair dried into an utter mess and a goofy smile on his lips and wondered if this was the man he always was to her daughter.

"Thanks," she told him wholeheartedly.

He winked at her and offered, "No problem. And if you ever feel like you might go on a rampage, I'll gladly take the little prince off your hands."

Snow laughed. "That, I'd like to see."

Emma, who had slunk into the background to take a call from Henry, came up next to her husband, slinging an arm around his waist. "Oh, I don't know, I think he'd be pretty good at it."

She looked up at him, face incredibly soft, a look mirrored on Killian. They stared at each other, apparently unaware she was still standing in front of them.

(Snow died to ask if she should expect more grandchildren in the not so distant future, but held herself back.)

As it seemed that the kitchen would become unsafe again soon, she decided to bow out gracefully.

"Bye, guys," she told them and they returned the sentiment, reluctantly breaking eye-contact with each other.

 

 

"Good morning," she told David, entering the kitchen.

"Hey," he said, beaming, and leaned to kiss her cheek. "Where have you been? Neal and I have been wondering where you've gone off to."

But Snow didn't answer him. "Hi baby," she cooed and took Neal from him, who was reaching out for her.

"Hi baby," she repeated, littering his little cheeks with kisses. He giggled and Snow took his hand and pretended to munch on it. Neal squealed with joy.

Laughing, Snow hugged him tightly to her, closing her eyes and breathing in his baby scent. When she opened  them, David was looking at them, filled with love.

What had she been thinking, not talking to him, she mentally scolded herself, but quickly lost her thought when he kissed her. Even Neal's babbling seemed far away, in her warm little bubble, and when David broke the kiss, she kept her eyes closed for a moment longer, bathing in the moment.

"And?"

Confused, she opened her eyes to look at him. "What?"

He laughed. "Where have you been?"

"Oh. I was at Emma's and Killian's," she answered, shifting the baby in her arms.

"Everything good?" he asked, turning around to cut up pieces of banana for Neal.

"Yeah, everything's perfect," she said, looking down at her baby. She'd tell David that she needed some time to herself, sometimes, but not right now.

Right now she was good, she decided, turning her face towards the sunlight.

 

 


End file.
